Source: (2006) Johannesburg, South Africa: Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation.
In 2004, CSVR’s Ex-Combatants Reintegration and Restorative Justice Project successfully piloted eleven victim/ex-combatant dialogues that focused on past political violence in South Africa. The Project continued in 2005 with a revised focus on achieving community benefits and sustainability. Victim/victim discourses, ex-combatant/ex-combatant discourses, and dialogues on intergenerational conflicts and disappearance cases were undertaken in 2005. Furthermore, during this second pilot year some of the ex-combatants and survivors were trained as apprentice facilitators and thereafter directly assisted in dialogue preparations and in facilitating mediations. This report assesses whether the dialogues undertaken in the second year of the pilot ultimately assisted with the Project’s key goals of community reconciliation and ex-combatant reintegration. It concludes that the dialogues were indeed beneficial as they taught individuals and communities new mediation and negotiation skills. In addition, with regard to promoting ex-combatant reintegration and victim empowerment, the Project also proved successful in terms of the valuable skills development of the apprentice facilitators. (author’s abstract)
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